lostcarnival | Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

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Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

Who: Jimmy and Sherlock
When: Day 47-ish? After the Atlantis event kicks off.
Where: Sherlock's trailer
What: Jimmy's just gotten some information from Joker that's amazingly good news! But he has enough sense to try and get a second opinion before running off to the Ringmaster.

Jimmy couldn't believe it. He couldn't. Nobody was that lucky. If Joker was pulled here from the 1880s, and Jimmy from 2009.... Granted, he'd been with Castiel for some time, and he couldn't pin down much time had passed. But 2009 was the last thing he could solidly remember, so he was going with it.

But this? This was a second chance. A chance to change everything. Force Castiel to go somewhere else. To someone else. {If Castiel cared to ask, Jimmy would suggest a long-term coma patient with no surviving relatives. It'd be the easiest on everyone.) All he had to do was find the Ringmaster and-

Jimmy drifts to a stop as something occurs to him. How many times has Castiel gone off after something that may or may not help, without consulting anyone? Yes, the vortex of emotional constipation that was Dean Winchester didn't set a very high bar to clear, but Jimmy at least, could learn from Castiel's mistakes. Which meant getting a second opinion. Except even with all of the magic and persistent weirdness going on, the list of things Jimmy had been through was a high bar to clear. And that was before things got really bad.

And the people Jimmy would trust with anything more than a vague suggestion of what happened is depressingly short. And easily narrowed down to one person. Sherlock. And he could work out the finer points of what he needed to do, if Sherlock didn't think Jimmy was completely insane and kicked him back out. Then Jimmy would have to wing it and go to the Ringmaster on his own. Assuming she stays to form, he'll end up with another year at the Carnival.

But he would go home after. Pick up where he left off, and get on with his amazingly mundane life. First, though, is getting the second opinion and getting himself to Sherlock's trailer. Which means getting himself over there and all worked up again, until by the time he's arrived at the trailer, he's banging on the door and darting through as soon as it opens, tentacles fanning out around him as he spins to face Sherlock. There are a dozen things he wants to say, but all he can manage to get out at first is "I CAN FIX IT!

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Sherlock, quite honestly, was not expecting that. He shut the door behind him with a flick of his tail.

"Good for you?"

It wouldn't end there, obviously, and he'd never seen Jimmy that excited, so it was something serious. Maybe he should put the kettle on. Underwater tea was pretty good, all things considered. Even if it did defy physics.

Edited 2017-02-01 03:56 (UTC)

"It's.... Time doesn't matter! When my contract is up, I walk out and go anywhere, right? What if I can go anywhen too?!" Jimmy turns again, facing Sherlock as he talks. Definitely at least a little manic. "If I can go back and stop myself then I can stop it all. No 'Yes', no angel, no none of it!"

If he still had legs, he'd be pacing. But he's drifting back and forth in a reasonable facsimile, arms gesturing as he's caught up in the potential of what he's got in mind. "It'd be another year, for sure. But it would be worth every second."

Okay then.

Sherlock floated there, trying to deduce him, and figure out what had gotten him so worked up. Because right now he was completely lost--time? Time doesn't matter? Something bad clearly happened in his past and he wanted to be dropped off before it happened.

"Right, well--are you sure you're willing to put up with all of this for another year?" He waved a webbed hand. And he frowned.

"And are you sure that this won't backfire horribly?"

"This...... What I did didn't just wreck my life. It hurt my wife. It hurt my daughter. Another year of this is nothing compared to that." Jimmy waves a webbed hand, encompassing the Carnival at large. This is nothing compared to the horror he felt at seeing Castiel possess Claire, either. But he's not bringing that one up.

"I ruined their lives, Sherlock. And if I can fix that, then I have to try. It's.... If you had a chance to go back and change something in your own life. Not the easy answers of 'Stop the JFK assassination' or 'Kill Hitler'... Your life. If you could go back and stop yourself from doing something that you found out later was a catastrophic mistake, would you?"

Sherlock stares, trying to deduce him. He looks down and away at that question.

"Yes. I would."

But the questions...so many variables.

"This isn't something to be taken lightly. Have you considered what might go wrong with your past changed?"

"I know." Jimmy sighs, shifting to lean on a counter. "But.... I don't remember there being anything that said it had to be me. Maybe I was just the best choice." He sighs and looks out the window. "My memory of that stretch of time is incredibly spotty. But I'm pretty sure that there wasn't anything saying it had to be me or Claire specifically."

"But it's worth it. Even if I remember everything that happened. If I can keep the angel away from her."

...yeah, what? He was totally lost.

"Sorry, what? Angel? I'm not quite sure I follow." Sherlock frowned.

Obviously something bad had happened, but right now Jimmy was about twenty steps ahead. This must be what it feels like to be other people around himself. Huh.

The look on Jimmy's face continues to fade from joyous enthusiasm to wary anxiety. Of course Jimmy was going to have to explain himself. Stupid of him to think otherwise. "It's.... It's complicated, and I know you're going to think I've completely lost it. Even with all of this going on." Another wave of his hand to encompass the Carnival. "And there's no proof. That's the killer. There's no way for me to prove to you that what happened was real, and not a schizophrenic delusion." He reaches up to slide one of the large beads out of his hat and drops it on the floor so the tentacles can fidget and worry something that isn't Sherlock's furniture.

"After all of this?" Sherlock waved a webbed hand around them, and towards Jimmy. "Literally nothing you can say will surprise me."

The world--worlds, actually--was far more than he could have ever imagined. And Jimmy was obviously distressed, so whatever it was that was bothering him was clearly real. He hadn't displayed any signs of mental illness as far as he could tell.

"Okay. Once I start talking, just... Just let me go. This is going to be hard to talk about, and I don't think I can get through it more than once. Especially once it starts getting bad." He waits for Sherlock's nod before getting started.

"It started in.... mid to late 2007. I want to say August?" Jimmy looks thoughtful for a moment, and the tentacles start tapping each other as if they were counting on fingertips. "Yeah. August works. I don't remember precisely, since there's a lot of blank spaces now, but that feels about right."

"Anyway. Right around August, I started hearing voices. Voices in the static of my television, saying that it was an angel, and I had been chosen to help with the Lord's work." And that phrase is spoken with such bitterness. Jimmy will never, ever forgive himself for this one. "And it sounded... Real. There were demonstrations of proof and my faith. Nothing big, but definite signs that there was something supernatural at work." The tentacles stop counting now, curling and polishing the bead like a worry stone.

"And I saw it as signs I had been chosen. That I was special. That I was.... A god damned egomaniac who was willing to throw it all away for one good stroke." Jimmy sighs and looks back out the window into the medium distance. It hurts to admit that he screwed up this badly. "My wife thought I was losing my mind. Dragged me off to a psychiatrist. Prescribed weekly sessions to discuss my problems, given a tentative diagnosis of schizophrenia and started on the first of several varieties of anti-psychotics." He shrugs, continuing with "They didn't work, obviously. Between the insomnia and the stutter from the first, the hallucinations from the second, and the near-fatal allergic reaction to the third, they decided that as long as I knew they were hallucinations and tried to minimize their impact on my day to day life, then it was probably better to let me go unmedicated."

"And that was the next six months. I'd try a new prescription, and have the side effects without having any effect on hearing the angel. He was still there, and still talking to me. Except at one point, the angel was a bit more clear about what I'd been chosen for." Another sigh, and Jimmy shudders. "See, angels can't come down here and walk among people anymore. Not without something horrible happening. Blindness, insanity, death.... Non-euclidean is not a bad way to describe them, if you've ever read any Lovecraft." Jimmy glances over at Sherlock for the first time, to see if he's following along. "Unless you're something called a vessel. It means you can look at an angel in all their non-euclidean glory and be fine."

"What it also means, however, is that you're literally a 'vessel' an angel can possess you and drive your body around like a rental car if you agree to it." Jimmy's arms come up in a self-hug, and the tentacles curl up and start intertwining with each other. "And I'd been getting a solid line of bull from an angel for months, and getting into fights with my wife about it for months too." He scrubs a hand over his face and shakes his head at how stupid he was. "It came to a head in March 2008. The angel was really laying it on thick, and things were getting worse with Amelia... That's my wife's name, she threatened to take Claire and leave, if I wasn't going to try and do anything since the voices were obviously getting worse. She thought I was a threat to her." Jimmy's voice is thick at this point, and his eyes are a little too wet.

"And in a stupid, petty fit of pique, I grabbed my coat and went outside. I'd just gotten home from work and I was still wearing my black suit, and after the fight, I walked outside and.... I don't know what I thought. I thought that I'd prove her wrong, and that the angel was real and that it'd all be okay." He shakes his head at his stupidity and sighs, trying to get his composure back. ".... I walked out of my house, looked up, and said yes."

"I don't really remember much of anything immediately after that. It felt like.... You know, when you're in the back of an elevator, and there are way, way too many people on? That crush? It kind of felt like that. Except it was all in my head, and my body wasn't doing what I told it to. The angel was driving, and I'd been shoved into the back seat." The self-hug is back, with Jimmy rubbing his upper arms and looking quietly miserable.

"And this was before it got really bad."

Edited 2017-02-04 10:39 (UTC)

"See, it was the end of the world. At least, that's what the angel told me. The seals holding the devil in Hell were breaking, and when they all went pop, that was it. The end of the world." Jimmy shrugs, settling on a sort of detached monotone voice at this point. "I lost months. The angel said 'sleep' and that was it. I'd be out like a light. And when I was awake, going along for the ride was like getting dragged behind a comet. All light and speed, and absolutely no control over what was happening."

"I got a chance to go back home. See, some beings on both sides wanted the end of the world to happen. A chance to hit a reset button, and the angel I'd ended up with got dragged off for disciplinary action for trying to stop it. I didn't care. I was free. Ditched my babysitters and ran home. Which was mistake number two." Still monotone and the tentacles aren't even trying to hide their distress anymore, if there was anywhere to hide, they'd be buried in the sand by now. "The angel's enemies followed me home, got my wife possessed by a demon and the angel possessing my daughter." A pause, before Jimmy looks over at Sherlock. "Being a vessel runs in families, did you know that? I didn't. I did that to her, and I didn't even know what I was doing. I'd gotten shot, and I was dying on the floor of a warehouse, and I begged the angel to leave her alone. He agreed, and here I am."

"The next thing I really remember was the first time the angel got us killed. My babysitters from before were caught up in the middle of all of this, and Heaven and Hell both loved 'em. They were SO fucked. The... Winchesters. Sam and Dean Winchester. Safer to say their names. They're just human and can't hear their names spoken. Anyway. The angel and those two were going to save the world, or die trying. The angel decided that he and I were going to stop the devil, or at least slow him down." Jimmy snorts in derision. "The devil snapped his fingers, and we.... Lemme see if I remember it right.... 'Came apart at the sub-atomic level."

"Next thing I'm really aware of, is the angel trying to get me to calm down." He pauses thoughtfully. "You know how hard it is to scream when you're a voice in the back of your own head?"

Sherlock gave a nod as Jimmy began, but honestly, nothing could prepare him for that tale. Absolutely nothing.

He wanted to laugh, but he didn't dare. He wanted to tell Jimmy he was absolutely stark raving bonkers, but he could tell when a person truly believed that something happened to them, it was his job to be able to weed out who was telling a story and who was really telling the truth. Sometimes he got it wrong but this...why would Jimmy make it up? And yeah, there was the possibility he was mad, it sounded absolutely mad, but then again, when did he ever imagine he'd be a shark mermaid--merman and part of a magical carnival. Was Jimmy's story really that far off?

Sherlock still had to hide his initial scoff. It showed on his face, but as the tale wore on, his skepticism was fading into worry.

If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remained, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

...

"That..." he tried to think of the right word to say. "That's...certainly something."

"..... There's more." Jimmy admits, looking ill.

"After that, things really start going downhill, and my recollections start getting patchy. Not because I was asleep, but it was stuff I didn't want to remember." The tentacles are worrying the bead like they're trying to polish it to oiled glass levels of smooth, and Jimmy himself doesn't look much better. "There was a really powerful demon, and an archangel, and the angel that was using me ended up teaming up with the demon to open a door to Purgatory for some reason... And the archangel snapped her fingers, and that was death #2. Pop." Jimmy accentuates the word with a popping noise.

"The demon was going to use the souls in Purgatory for something, I couldn't tell you. All I know is that the angel screwed them both over and took all that power for himself. Which turned into him deciding to sub-let my head." Jimmy pauses, folding in on himself with a shudder. "They were the very first things God created. They told me, sometimes. When they could catch me." He shrugs. "There were a whole lot of them crammed into my.... well, it wasn't really mine at this point. The shared body, then. And the only things to do were plot and scheme about what they were going to do when they got out, try and goad the angel into doing things, or play with me."

"That's where I was, when the Ringmaster dropped by. The angel was going to walk into a reservoir and turn all of those things loose in the water, and I had no idea if I had enough left to survive coming back a third time." Jimmy shudders, not daring to follow that train of thought. "She just dropped in like it was no big deal, and offered me a way out in exchange for a a year of working here for her. I couldn't agree fast enough." His composure is mostly gone, but he's still trying to hold up the facade.

"And if this place can travel through time, then I can go back and stop myself from saying yes, then none of that will have happened. And when the angel rambled.... As things got bad and the angel got more desperate, then he got really rambly. He tried to apologize, tried to say that there wasn't anything that mentioned me specifically. That I was just the best choice." Jimmy hasn't looked up from where he's been staring, either out the window or at a spot on the floor. "And if I can stop it from happening? Another year of this is a cake walk, compared to that."

Edited 2017-02-04 17:52 (UTC)

Annnnd it got worse.

Sherlock was having a tough enough time as it was coming to terms with the reality of the carnival, other worlds--apparently it was something that was plausible, just he didn't really think about it. He was a scientist, none of what he'd seen over the past month should be in any way possible. And yet, here they were.

Okay, so he laughed. But it was more of a scoff of horror than outright mockery. He couldn't, not when he was currently about 75% shark. He had no high ground to cover on this one. Sherlock seemed to be genuinely disturbed, though, and he was covering it with humor.

"Right so..." Don't be rude, don't be rude. "Let's pretend that whatever you said happened...happened." That was rude. "The only trouble you'll run into here is to your own person, and this is saving your family." A pause. "Then there's really not much of a decision to make then, is there?"

Jimmy misses the look but hears the scoff, and turns towards Sherlock, looking stricken. Seeing the look on his face takes the edge off, though. Outside confirmation is kind of nice. That it was horrible.

The 'pretend' gets a tiny flinch out of him. He should have known, right? "Yeah. But given how.... how great everything's been going for me, I was thinking stopping and thinking it through would be a better option. The... the angel was prone to over-reacting and having it explode in his face. Granted, the Winchesters were a pair of co-dependent train wrecks in their own rights."

Sherlock shrugs. "There's always the possibility it could go absolutely and horrifically wrong. If you've weighed the pros and cons, though..."

He still has a funny look on his face like he's struggling to accept what he said versus the very real consequences that something happened that was clearly obvious with Jimmy's face, posture, body language, actual language...it was so mad he was experiencing some sort of cognitive dissonance.

"It's.... There's not a lot to really weigh. If I go back, it'll cost me another year here. But it doesn't matter if I can get dropped off whenever I want after everything's finished." And another year of this would be so easy in comparison. Even the worst of it.

"After the last few years, I can't... Can't help but wonder if the angel was wrong about this too? That I'm making everything worse by trying to fix it, just like he did." Jimmy shakes his head, and slides a hand over his hair, since the webbed membranes prevent him really running his fingers through his hair. "But this? I can't really think of anything worse than this."

"Well, suppose you'll find out eventually."

That...that wasn't helpful, Sherlock.

"And at the very least, you tried. You did something. You protected your family." Surprisingly kind words from the still-baffled-looking detective.

"Tried, anyway. And I don't know what's happened to them since the angel left with me the second time." Jimmy's hoping for the best, but clearly bracing himself for the worst. He's hoping that they're going to be okay, and just wondering what happened and where he went, and that he's not going home to graves and a repossessed house.

"I'm just worried that there's no way to protect them. That everything I try will end with them being dead in a different way than they were before." He sighs, tentacles idly curling under him. "Not that they're dead. I hope they're not, but anyone caught up in this mess that isn't the angel or named Winchester tends to die. Usually badly."

Sherlock chewed on his lip. Bad idea considering his rows of teeth, but it didn't harm him.

That was a...difficult dilemma.

"Have you ever heard of the story of the Merchant of Sammara?"

Edited 2017-02-09 04:02 (UTC)

"I..... no?" Jimmy shakes his head. "Can't say that I have." It doesn't sound familiar, anyway. It's possible he might have heard it somewhere and not recognized it. "What's it about?"

"There was once a merchant, in the famous market at Baghdad. One day he saw a stranger looking at him in surprise, and he knew that the stranger was Death. Pale and trembling, the merchant fled the marketplace and made his way many, many miles, to the city of Samarra. For there he was sure Death could not find him. But when, at last, he came to Samarra, the merchant saw, waiting for him, the grim figure of Death. "Very well," said the merchant. "I give in. I am yours. But tell me, why did you look surprised when you saw me this morning in Baghdad?" "Because," said Death, "I had an appointment with you tonight... in Samarra."

He looked at Jimmy.

"If fate is real, if there is nothing anyone can do, then...there is nothing anyone can do."

"Though I hated the ending of that story and always wrote my own."

Edited 2017-02-09 06:34 (UTC)

Jimmy nods slowly. "That does sound kind of familiar. I probably heard it somewhere and forgot the names." He takes a deep breath and tries to get himself a little more settled, and the tentacles have gone from tangling themselves up in knots to trying to wrap themselves around the couch.

"I kind of think that fate doesn't really care about you, unless you're on the short list of people that are going to do Big Things." He's trying to use this discussion as a distraction from the things he was just talking about, but it seems to be working a little. "And if you get close to one of those people, then you get dragged along with them, and everything you could have had before that is just... gone. After your run in with them. If you survive it." Jimmy's getting a little rambly, and he knows it, but he can't make any more sense of what happened to him that Sherlock can, really.

"I don't like the idea of fate," Sherlock said after a moment. "But I am open to the possibility that it could be real, maybe not in the metaphysical sense, but in the way that your actions have consequences that cannot be avoided."

A shrug, and a sad little smile. "Can't offer much else than philosophical questions. But coming from someone that's usually dragging other people along with him, everyone else's contributions are noticed."

Jimmy smiles weakly at that. "It's good to hear. That you noticed. Most of the time, the angel tended towards 'Sit down. I know what I'm doing. Trust me.' with a side order of 'I'm fine', some days." Which gets a shudder out of Jimmy. Someone saying they're fine when they're going off the rails was bad enough for a human. An angel being 'fine' was something altogether worse.

"I'd even be okay with remembering.... everything, as long as I could keep them out of it."

Ah. Sounded rather familiar. He reads Jimmy's body language and looks rather uncomfortable. Not because of what happened to Jimmy, but because of John. He would often do the same, ignore what John was feeling or thinking to get on with the case. Usually that ended up saving lives or finding justice, but seeing someone's actual reaction reminded him just how much poor John put up with.

"All I can say is...good luck," Sherlock looked up at him. "I don't have the data or information to reassure you in any other way."

Edited 2017-02-10 14:50 (UTC)

"Would you believe it's actually kind of comforting to hear you say that?" The smile's a little more sincere this time, and the tense edge fades from Jimmy's posture.

"With.... everything before, it seemed like there was a lot of coasting in momentum, making it up as they go, and nobody bothering to talk to anyone else. Just hearing someone say 'I have no idea how to help.' is a novel change of pace."

"I've been told my 'bedside manner' is atrocious. However it seems like it worked in this regard," Sherlock comments quietly, mostly to himself. He looks a little confused by Jimmy's positive reaction. Comfort in discomfort? Such an odd reaction. But not unwarranted. He understood what he meant.

"I.... Can understand that. And it did." Jimmy sighs again, shaking his head. "Everyone was so convinced that they were doing the right thing, and that that there was no time to even try considering other options that..."

"They felt that even taking five minutes to talk about other options would have been the end of everything. And in the long run, it might have made everything a little bit worse." Absolutely worse for Jimmy, anyway. And there aren't really a lot of good ways to articulate the feedback he was getting from Castiel, anyway. Subconscious? Subliminal? The bits he got were all tinged with this overwhelming sense of urgency.

"Which is what happens when people let emotions like fear overwhelm their decision making process," Sherlock said simply.

A wry look. "I probably would have gone mad if I was taken for a ride with what sounds like a band of incompetent people." Either he was warming up to the idea what Jimmy went through was true, or he was speaking in hypotheticals. But he wasn't scoffing at him. No, something definitely happened to Jimmy. Whatever it was, it was clearly real. Whatever world he'd come from, whatever all of this was, it existed. It was possible it could only exist in Jimmy's mind, but he hadn't any indication of any further delusions.

"They were very good at everything relating to what they did, but they were utter disasters in just about every other aspect of their lives." Another deep breath to steady himself, and Jimmy shakes his head. "It's like if it wasn't related to hunting..... Of the supernatural creature variety, not, y'know, deer. Then it didn't matter. Including things like communication skills."

"The times when I was... asleep helped a little. Even if it meant losing months. It was things that the angel was doing that I wasn't seeing. Woke up one time, six dead people on the floor and me in the middle of them." Jimmy shudders at the thought. Hadn't that been a lovely surprise. Risking multiple homicide charges on top of everything else. "... Although, I might have actually been able to use the insanity defense. Being diagnosed as schizophrenic and all."

That sounded familiar. Not unlike himself sacrificing everything in order to be the best consulting detective he could be at the expense of oh, every other thing in his life.

"Supernatural crea...you know what, I don't want to know." A wave of his hand.

Sherlock perked up at the mention of mysterious murders. Very much so. He looked positively entranced. "Really? Did you find out what happened? Did you get arrested?" A part of him sort of hoped Jimmy was a homicidal maniac, just because that would make things so much more interesting around here.

Edited 2017-02-17 01:53 (UTC)

"No, it's pretty much exactly what it says on the label. The Ringmaster? Supernatural creature of some kind, though she's probably too powerful for the Winchesters to really tangle with unless they had a lot of help." The tentacles stretch and curl up again as Jimmy talks, before going back to fidgeting with the bead.

"No, I didn't get arrested. I think the angel just.... teleported? Flew? us out of there. I just hope he changed my fingerprints." Jimmy looks down at one hand, sighing. "I'd hate to go back to..... well, a lot of arrest warrants. I think? the angel took care of it, anyway. I don't remember any run-ins with the police." Sorry, Sherlock. It looks like your 'Jimmy the Axe Murderer' hopes will be disappointed.

"Of course...brilliant," Sherlock said dryly. It'd taken him ages to come to terms with the Ringmaster being fae, and even right now, when he was literally a shark person, it still bugged him.

Ah well. He looked visibly disappointed, even his tail drooped downwards. Such a pity.

"Maybe you left some evidence behind," he said hopefully. Even though that...that would not be good for Jimmy at all, Sherlock, seriously?

"I hope not!" Leaving Amelia and Claire to explain the angel's rampage, and him to take the fall for it? All the more reason to get on with the deal, get home and stop all of this.

"I think I'm going to do it, but I don't know when a good time would be. Not now. Not when she's.... Godzilla-sized." Another vague handwave in the direction of the Ringmaster's abode. "Maybe after this. Maybe there will be some transition time so we can dry everything out before we get to the next stop."

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Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

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Part 1 of the Exposition Dump.

Part 2.

Part 3 of the Horror Show.

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Part the last.

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